ike so many anime series, Last Exile begins with a breathtaking action scene without giving viewers the context they need to understand it. Flying through what appears to be a dark and buffeting storm, an airship duels a large fleet of enemy flyers. Suddenly, the ship breaks through an aerial ripple and drops into a perfectly placid, clear blue sky.
The action then switches to young business partners Claus Valca and Lavie Head, a pilot-and-wingman team trying to make their reputation by taking on dangerous courier jobs while participating in name-making air races. Their latest job involves delivering a personal message to a high-ranking fleet commander of the Anatoray kingdom, which has just begun a peculiarly formalized, stately aerial battle with the Disith kingdom. Once the combat is properly sanctioned by the supposedly neutral Guild, the ships begin moving into place as if for a sporting match. On the Anatoray flagship's bridge, a puffed-up, aristocratic officer speaks proudly of dignity and honor as his fleet prepares to face the much weaker Disith, who nonetheless make a direct frontal attack, "upholding a code of chivalry passed down for many generations." Meanwhile, in the holds below, elaborately costumed soldiers prepare to stand on platforms in the open and exchange steam-powered musket fire with the opposing fleet. Undefended musketeers go down in bloody waves as the Anatoray brass above count up the numbers of "destroyed" personnel and celebrate an apparent victory.
Meanwhile, Claus and Lavie land on the fleet's flagship, just as a noticeably unchivalrous Disith fleet descends from above for a surprise attack, catching the Anatoray fleet utterly off guard. When the Guild mysteriously fails to call foul against the Disith, the Anatoray seem to be headed for obliteration, but Claus and Lavie's unwitting intervention, along with the more direct intercession of the Silvana, the ship from the series' opening scene, saves the day. Before long, Claus and Lavie find themselves with a new mission: to deliver 11-year-old Alvis Hamilton to the Silvana after her guardians die attempting to protect her from the surprisingly violent and determined Guild.
A darker, modern-day Laputa
Hayao Miyazaki must love Last Exile. The series and his movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky share many things, from the sweet-but-scrappy kid stars to the lost-girl-with-a-valuable-secret macguffin. But above all, both center on an almost fetishistic, nuts-and-bolts love of flight and flying machines. Last Exile reads very much like a modern-day update of Castle—the characters and institutions map over from one to the other on an almost one-to-one basis. (Claus for Pazu, Alvin and Lavie both representing Sheeta at different stages, the mysterious and dangerous "Grand Stream" for Laputa itself, Sophia and the Silvana's crew for Dora and her pirates, the Guild for the government, and so forth.) But where Castle is a kid-friendly epic adventure, Exile has a distinctly dark edge—particularly in its mocking depiction of war as a process in which the upper echelons prosper by casually squandering their underlings' lives.
And Exile also strikes out on its own with its cutting-edge digital animation. Production designer Mahiro Maeda (who chats about Exile on one of the DVD's extras) was behind the "Second Renaissance" sequences of The Animatrix, and director Kouichi Chigira last worked on Full Metal Panic!; both men have extensive experience with digital animation, and it shows. From the bravura opening sequence onward, Exile is visually rich and stunning, though the CGI looks more obvious and artificial in the ship design than in the characters and environments.
But perhaps most promising is the way Exile establishes, from the very beginning, a complex, alien world where minor characters are fleshed out in interesting ways, and the unique air economy shapes society in interesting directions. Above all, the little touches, like the quaint, quasi-historical costuming and ship design, or Claus and Lavie's astonished reaction to clean, flowing water, all hint at a complex, multilevel story with a great deal of thought behind it. Last Exile's plot recalls Laputa, but in its balance between broad range and tiny details, and its emotive, romantic, but realistic tone, it more resembles the stellar The Vision of Escaflowne. Fans of that series would do well to check this one out.
The series' official English site contains a great deal of useful information, from a character list to the names of many of the Anatoray airships to a basic vocabulary for Claus and Lavie's world. In particular, it's interesting to note how much of the series' technical idioms come from chess terminology.
— Tasha
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